Shafts of Glory

My beautiful friend Sonja died on May 18. The French doors in her room overlooked water flowing into a pool. There were the lightest of gauze voile curtains, a veil through which you could see bright sunshine and the water. Our friend Amanda lovingly journeyed with her to the end and describes how the Lord was tangibly present. The day before Sonja went to glory, Amanda wrote to me of,

“The voile curtains billowing… the veil and the living water and the brilliant Light the veil reveals behind.”

Sometimes I live life as if there were a concrete partition, not a veil between me and the eternal. As if Jesus hadn’t died. As if the Holy of Holies in the temple was still barred by an impenetrable curtain.

But we are welcome to enter in,

“We have confidence to enter the most holy holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, opened up through the curtain, that is his body…. ” Hebrew 12:20

Through all the grief that has come with Trevor’s death and Sonja’s death, there have been shafts of glory, moments where the bright light of eternity has broken through the clouds.

It was precious that my final time with Sonja was reading from The Gift of Blessing book while my sister in law gave her a beautifully scented hand massage. Then I read from Psalm 27 which expresses that deep longing to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and Sonja joined in from memory. She is gazing now on the Lord in all his glory.

But we don’t have to wait to know God’s shining face. We are welcomed through the veil. And as Andrew Murray so wonderfully writes in his commentary on Hebrews, Jesus secures not only our entrance but our abiding there.